He's sitting in that motherfucking stairwell with his shitty sightlines to Jim and his fucking target in perfect sight, damn him, and nothing about this job is the way he'd want it but as The Boss had told him this morning, that's why he's not in charge, so he's sitting around waiting to maybe get to fuck shit up and without warning or a so much as "Oh yes, Seb, today my backup plan is to blow my fucking brains out, do you have a problem with that, lover?", Jim Moriarty (or is he playing Rich Brook?) puts a gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger and for once Sherlock Holmes and Sebastian Moran seem to be feeling on the same spectrum of emotion because holy hell…
And he sees it, not as well as he'd like but he sees it and he hears the echo of the gun's report against the buildings of London, of the city that he knows as intimately as he knows Jim's body, as Jim knows his, and he hates it. Hates anything and everything and it can all burn in hell. Christ. And when he hears the single shot, when he sees the pool of blood spilling from the prone form of a man who hasn't been vulnerable since he hit puberty, if not before (maybe not since his mum died), he utters one word, like a breath, like a prayer: "James." And then fucking Sherlock fucking Holmes the bloody genius boy who Jim felt it necessary to die for (Holmes was always more important to Jim; Seb never could come close), to die to beat him, well he jumps off the building and doesn't that just beat all, that in the end, The Boss won. So Seb dismantles his gun, and he's never been so mentally absent, but right now he feels like he's floating, and is that even possible? And bloody hell damn it all Jim is still laying there and of course he's not going to get up but it's safe to get up now, Jim. So get up. Get up, damn you. Get up, you bastard. We're going to get Chinese, remember? You refused, you fought me tooth and nail because I wanted fucking Thai but no, you hate Thai, so of course I caved and we're having bloody Chinese, but I'm not going to fucking bring it to you, do I look like a maid service or a waiter, no, so get your sweet little ass up so we can go pick it up and watch trashy telly and laugh at the mere mortals who think they can stop us, and God Jim please get up, why aren't you getting up?
Ex-Colonel Sebastian Moran picks up his bag that holds the pieces of his gun, calmly makes his way down the stairs, and vanishes.